Understanding wireless antennas.
When you talk to a true wireless professional,
you'll see that they start picking
nits between the difference of a radio and an antenna.
A lot of people think they're the same thing.
They see an antenna on a device, and they go, oh well,
that's the radio.
That's what transmits and receives all the communication,
interprets it, and all that kind of stuff.
And the wireless professional will
be quick to stand up and go no, no, no, no, no, that's
the antenna.
Inside of the device is the radio
which actually interprets the signal
and assembles the signal that's received by the antenna
and hands it off to some device that does something with it.
In the case of a walkie talkie, that device
might play the sound out the speaker.
Whenever I hear a discussion like that,
I always have to ask the question, why--
why does it matter that we're really
differentiating between the antenna and the radio.
And the reason I side with the wireless professional
is because it does matter.
The antenna you can change, the radio you can't.
By changing the antenna, you can change
the direction or the flow of that wireless signal.
Now what we can do is change the radio,
but one thing that we've seen over the years
is that radios are being added to our devices.
Instead of just communicating and sending and receiving
with one radio and one antenna, we now
see multiple radios and multiple antennas.
That's called MIMO-- multiple input, multiple output.
We'll break that one down quite a bit in an upcoming Nugget.
For now, remember when you combine these two things
together-- you take one antenna and match it up to one radio--
you create something known as a radio chain.
And that describes the full path of communication
from generating the signal to transmitting it
up and radiating it out into the air.
Now over the last couple of years,
my boys have been growing up.
My oldest boy is now 7, and we've
got him enrolled in Little League baseball.
I'm one of the assistant coaches,
and we played this team once where
they had this guy at first base with this giant glove.
Now it wasn't this big, but when I saw it,
I looked and I looked at the head coach and I said,
you can't do that.
You can't have a giant glove for the first baseman.
And he goes, well, actually, yes you can.
In baseball, there's different functions, and the glove
that that first baseman used might not
be appropriate for somebody playing at shortstop.
It's that way simply because the first baseman
doesn't move too much.
Just about every ball goes to him
because that's where you get your force outs.
And it's the same way with wireless antennas.
Most of the time, the antennas that you use
just do a general flow, like water pouring out of a faucet.
But there are also times where you'll
want to put your thumb right over that hose
and shoot that signal as far as you
can go in a single direction.
That really describes the two different types
of antennas that are out there in the wireless world.
Now keep in mind there are a lot more than two,
but they all fall under one of these umbrellas.
They're either omnidirectional, which
means they radiate the signal equally in all directions.
And always remember that a wireless antenna
is three dimensional, so I can't draw it,
but this blob would rotate up, down, left and right.
It's a sphere.
If I could draw a--
I'm not even going to try.
If I could draw a sphere around the wireless access point,
that's what an omnidirectional antenna does.
Now directional antennas look like this.
This is actually known as a yagi antenna.
It takes the energy from the wireless access point
and focuses is out.
So instead of radiating in a sphere around the device,
it shoots that signal hundreds of meters,
potentially even miles or kilometers,
in a single direction.
It's not uncommon for a yagi intended to get some 40
to even well beyond 100 miles out of the signal.
The further you shoot it, the thinner that signal is,
and the harder it is to match up in the line up
the antenna on the other end.
Remember, the government regulates
how much power can be sent out the wireless device.
Just like the water company regulates how much
pressure your hose has.
How you choose to focus that pressure really
depends on your use case.
For most people doing internal wireless,
meaning just providing general wireless access,
omnidirectional is the way to go.
However, there's a ton of situations
where you might be beaming wireless between two buildings.
Maybe those buildings are a couple of miles apart.
That's where a directional antenna is a must.
Now I've got to tell you, if you're
bored this Friday evening, instead of just watching
a movie or playing some video games,
go to Google and type in build a WISP.
Oh, it's some inspiring stuff.
WISP stands for wireless internet service provider.
It's a growing movement where people
are buying space and little radio
towers all around metropolitan areas,
and they mount all kinds of directional antennas
that can shoot wireless signals down
to specific areas of the metropolitan area.
They then get some subscribers that sign up,
they mount a little dish on those places,
and deliver internet access wirelessly
for a fraction of the cost of a normal internet connection.
I'm telling you, after reading a few of those things,
you'll slam your fist down at the table and go,
I'm building a WISP.
And you'll move to some suburban area
and realize it's harder to build a WISP than you thought.
Nonetheless, you now know your antenna options
when building a wireless network.
I hope this has been informative for you,
and I'd like to thank you for viewing.